Specialty Box Office: Searchlight Has 'Belle' of the Box Office Ball; Focus Has a 'Walk of Shame,' Indeed

Here's a rundown of the specialty box office this first weekend of May. It's a new format for Indiewire's weekly box office column -- with debuts and holdovers both ranked separately in order of per-theater-average. This isn't always necessarily the best variable for ranking (though no one thing is with limited releases), but we'll try and explain whenever something did better or worse than its ranking suggests in the "winner" and "loser" of the weekend designations at the bottom of each chart. Happy Sundays!

Holdover Winner of the Weekend: All of these films can probably
give distributors a reason to celebrate in one way or another, but
arguably the biggest winner this time around is "Fading Gigolo," which
had a very successful expansion to 100+ theaters, jumping 69% and
holding onto an average north of $4,600. The John Turturro-directed film
(with a rare acting appearance by Woody Allen in a non-Woody Allen
directed film) is already the third highest grossing film in the three
year history of Millennium Entertainment.

Holdover Loser of the Weekend:
We'll refrain of officially designating any of these films a "loser,"
though the second weekend grosses of "Blue Ruin" -- notably a big hit on
VOD -- aren't worthy of "winner" status either.

Notable Milestones:

"The Grand Budapest Hotel" hit $50 million and is $1 million away from becoming Wes Anderson's highest grossing film ever.

"The Lunchbox" became the first foreign language release of 2014 to hit $3 million.

"Fading Gigolo" hit $1 million, as noted its one of only 4 Millennium Entertainment films to do so.

Outside the top 10, "Le Week-End" crossed the $2 million mark and "Enemy" hit $1 million.